Zaq

Pretty much everyone gets blown up in the larger brackets as far as I've experienced. The real bummer for me is that now that I can sometimes survive in 2's, I'm running oom unless I engage in some of the most blatant pillar humping imaginable, and don't participate offensively. It's really lame being unable to clear poisons.

"I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions. I'm just, like, inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty." -Taylor Mali

 

Psilux

I've found that I don't survive in 3s very well with the current 3dps strat, but in 5vs and 2vs I do pretty well. Consider in 2vs the moment you find out who your opponents are, that your actions will change drastically. If I can see my opponents (palies, dks, warriors, hunters, or mages that dont come out in invis), I'll pillar hump as normal and when they try to engage, I'll dodge just like all the rest of you guys.

What I do when I have stealthys is mount up and run around while my rogue partner tries to find someone. I'll run around pillars, back and forth to see if I can dodge someone and give my rogue enough time to find them. The longer I run, the better chance I have to survive. When they open on me, it's usually for a big amount of hp, so I try to throw up the shield + prom and instead of fearing, I go into the divine hymn. Since it shares the same cooldown as fear, you gotta try to catch the OTHER stealther before he has time to open on you. I'd just wish the radius on divine hymn was bigger or glyphable. If I don't catch one with hymn and get them to trinket out of it, its almost assuredly a loss.

 

Gourd

I am finding mana to be just as much of a problem as survivability, even against teams without a hunter. Also, since the implementation of disengage, I find LoSing viper sting to be nearly impossible - at least with any consistency. It is unfortunate that blizzard would appear to be balancing poisons entirely under the assumption that all healers can remove them.

 

Whatev

So the thing about rogues and feral druids is that the reason they appear worse to us is because their ability set is extremely effective against us in particular. They're not "strictly" more imbalanced than arcane mages or death knights or ret paladins.

Feral druids are arguably worse than rogues for shadow priests because their lack of an MS is much less important, they all have a fear break, and the only way shadow priests beat melee is by forcing a chase and bleeding them off, which doesn't work against feral druids.

 

Ashlina

I have found myself becoming frustrated also with my survivability. If the opposite team focus fire me im pretty much dead. My deathknight buddy uses a tactic to chase dps chasing me with icy touch/chains of ice it helps but like the previous poster I feel like im a hindrance and almost start wishing I was another class. I would change but love playing holy priest in pve

I manage to heal pretty well in most matches but experience things like 10k crits from rogues/ferals and 5k lavaburst 4k chain lightning from shammies. I'm not keen on whining and blaming my class/blizzard so im trying to focus and make sure im trinketing the second stun from rogues (hard, when they nearly kill you in the first, to resist it ) Using divine hymn is risky(because of its shared c/d with fear) and I dont really like doing it but it can often be a nice opener against stealth teams in lordearon/nagrand arena in particular.

Boomkin seems to be a nice class for a priest to team with cyclone is a life saver plus you can give them a nice dps boost with power infusion and they can cleanse those nasty rogue poisons and curses complementing nicely with your cleanse abilities. Ret pally also with cleanse and bop.

I only have 840 resilience atm getting the wg trinket soon which is a nice boost and im yet to see any improvement against rogues and other melee. Counterspell/nuke from arcane mages is also pretty nasty and I tend to pop pain supression as soon as I suspect arcane mage (from their buffs).

Fear seems almost only usuable as a trinket burner now at least you have your fear back before they have their trinket.
Anyone else have tips? Ill take whatever you got.

 

Lambi

I've tried searching everywhere now... anyone else noticed lightwell doesn't heal in arenas? Lost a few matches now because of it

 

Gourd

Yes, at least as of two days ago when I tested it, it was not working. It has been confirmed by Blizzard as an unintended bug as of 1/20/09.

 

royaljester

Been talking with a priest friend and we wondered what would be a reason for NOT spec'ing Silent Resolve? Are people defeatist and giving up on any chance of a resist?

 

Zaq

If you skipped it it'd be because you're expecting to avoid all dispels.

For Hunter/Paladin teams, is there really any chance if the hunter is any good? I don't see how to avoid being hard-oom in very short order against competent opposition.

"I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions. I'm just, like, inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty." -Taylor Mali

 

Mearis

Hunter/paladin hardcounters priest/x - you have a somewhat iffy shot at winning if the paladin is downright terrible and you pull off some godly crowd control chains, but you have maybe a minute to pull it off before you are OOM, and even if you get some amazing CC off on the paladin, deterrence is really good now.

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

• Lanky

If I see a Fury warrior, I tend to switch to him any time he has both weapons out and is in zerk. Taking 10% more damage from a Shadowfrost DK starts to really hurt healer mana after a while.

We've never lost to Priest DK, but then again I really don't see that comp very often on Stormstrike. More common by far is priest rogue. Only way I can see DK/P (hah!) beating DK/Paladin is by forcing an early bubble (somehow, probably gargoyle) and mass dispelling it. That's probably the only way to win. Mana burn don't work because Paladin regeneration just completely trumps it, and the priest ends up running out first :/

 

Whatev

This is actually remarkably doable with an SP (though playing with an SP has the disadvantage of causing you to lose many more games against rogues, which in turn prevents you from reaching high enough brackets that I can be sure of its effectiveness). At any rate, it's precisely as you say, only that more powerful dots combined with Silence and a relatively short cooldown fear make it much more feasible to force that early bubble.

It's actually not nearly as vital that the bubble be MDed because priests are fairly good at avoiding heavy damage from a solo DK, at least until the mana runs out--especially with an SP, it's sometimes more effective to keep running away from the DK and have your own DK peel for you while waiting out the bubble than it is to stop and try to get an untalented MD off.

 

Mearis

This is only really viable with a paladin healer though - if you tried tunneling the warrior, the warrior is getting fed an insane amount of rage, and fury warriors have a shitload of rage dumps they can rape a priest or a shaman with.

You won't kill a fury warrior faster than a fury warrior getting fed rage will kill a non-paladin healer. The flipside of course is that fury warriors make excellent switch targets after you soften them up, but staying on a fury warrior full time is really dangerous as healer/dps.

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

Gourd

Even with focused power, deathknights just save strangulate to protect their paladin's bubble, while the paladin gets an extra few seconds to move out of los.

 

Meursault

Er, huh? Their only rage dump is HS, and using HS often causes Furious Attacks to fall off, especially if there's a risk of PW:S or SS eating the non-HSed white swings.

Ragefed Fury Warriors are not nearly as large a threat as Arms or the warriors of TBC.

 

Seife

Interesting thought that next melee warrior specials might not be able to proc Furious Attacks. I should check that out.

A rage fed warrior can also sunder every other GCD, that makes a big difference. As a priest, you don't want to tank a warrior for prolonged times, even if he is rage starved!

 

Olgaz

Hi-

Just came back to the game after a long break, looking to get back into Priest PvP, but since there have been so many changes since I left, I had a few questions:

With the changes to Human/Dwarf racials, are they relatively equal in the higher brackets (2200+)?

Reading back into this thread to just before Season 5 started, I see many of the Priests complaining about poisons. Would this, coupled with the rise of Hunters, give Stoneform enough value to put it ahead of Human racials, even without the 8 sec immunity?

For human - I haven't played since they added Every Man For Himself; what trinkets are people using with the extra slot? Looking through these pages I see Battlemasters and Living Ice, I have also heard the Wintergrasp one for resilience, but I have also heard resilience is nowhere near as strong as it was in TBC.

 

Juli

Stoneform is still good and dwarves are WAY prettier, but viper sting got nerfed so it's a little less important.

As a human right now I'd probably use battlemaster and gnomish lightning generator until GLG gets nerfed, but by that time some ulduar trinket will probably be best. Other alternatives would depend on your comp and playstyle. They are also adding some more pvp-oriented trinkets in 3.1 (i.e. passive resil with spellpower or haste click effect).

I'd personally go dwarf princess over human.

 

Chim

I'm just about starting out in arena on my priest and looking around this thread I see quite a variety of different talents specs among the higher rated players.

Obviously there are core talents which noone in their right mind would skip but there seems to be quite a few points, perhaps 10 or so that fluctuate amongst all the builds I've looked at. I was thinking someting along the lines of Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft but I'm quite unsure. Noone seems to take blessed recovery which seems odd to me as it seems quite a powerful talent, free Hots on crits, but that may be my naivity coming through.

Reflective shield I can see being very strong in the smaller brackets, I am intending to start out in 2v2, not sure on a partner yet but I do have a willing rogue. Mental agility also seems great but perhaps I can get away with only 2 points in it assuming fights in 2v2 won't be 'too' long that mana is losing the match more than often.

Was also a toss up between spell warding and devine fury, perhaps if I need to play as more of an offensive healer I should opt for divine fury instead.


Any pointers or glaring mistakes I've over looked, all advice welcome as I've played 3 classes in arena previously, including 1 healer, but this is first time on my priest.

 

marsui

From my experience instant casts are your best friends, although dispelling is more expensive mana wise, dispelling is instant and you will prevent the dmg being done, rather than casting a flash heal to heal through it and risk getting interrupted.

You should probably take absolution +3, max out silent resolve +1, drop blessed recovery -3, and drop some points from Spell Warding-3, take martyrdom +2.

In addition, I would drop reflective shield -3 and max out mental agility +3...The are dropping reflective shield in 3.1 so might as well get used to not having it now, plus it only works on yourself, and not your partners right now due to a bug.

Personally I took 5/5 Divine fury over 5/5 enlightenment....enlightenment seems pretty weak but I don't ever cast greater heals so really all divine fury is doing is allowing me to toss out a quick holy fire to help my partner with some dmg....I'm considering putting those points back into enlightenment however since I usually just stick to SW:P, DP, and SW to help out with some dps.

 

Starfire

So, I haven't arena'd since season 1/2. I read through most of this thread and noticed a lot of the data is over 2 months old, even from page 34 and 35.

I recently started to arena again. And my question is, has anyone found good strategy to surviving a rogue?

Usually, I can survive probably a solid 20 seconds. But after Desperate Prayer and Alchemist Health Potion, I don't get much breathing room from the rogue. I trinket the Kidney shot as well.

I play Priest/Feral, and usually a rogue on a double dps team is easy for us as long as my partner opens up on the rogue. She keeps him busy. However, rogue healers are a bit more annoying. I've noticed as Discipline my ability to heal her is superior to my ability to heal myself (because of Penance, obviously and of course pushback/kicks/poisons). So what usually ends up happening is, I am forced to heal myself, my partner is on the rogue, but the rogue's partner is healing the rogue. Lack of an MS really makes this hard.

 

Duilliath

Tell your partner to get busy. Ferals are pretty darn good at peeling if necessary. Maim, Bash, Cyclone and Roots should make your life a fair bit easier, as well as Abolish Poison if she can spare it.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

MatsT

The lack of an MS effect in the priest+feral (or any healer+feral) setup makes it very hard to win the mana battle against dps+healer setups that does have an MS effect. Fortunatly, you don't have to run people oom to kill someone. The strength of feral druids is to peel almost indefinitely, and eventually you should be able to burst someone down in a cc chain. Don't be afraid to let the druid stop dps almost entirely and just maim->bash->cyclone->root while you drink to full mana, and eventually that opportunity should open up.

 

Chirality

This post is a bit older but I disagree with on a few of these talents. Silent Resolve is important, so is Martyrdom (mostly for Mass Dispel and Mana Burn). Reflective Shield is also something I consider to be very worth it--it's often the difference between a win and a loss against double-dps teams, and sometimes the difference between getting a kill against a DK attacking you and the DK living with a few thousand hitpoints (assuming his partner is cc'd).

I consider Spell Warding and Blessed Recovery to both be well worth sacrificing a few points for. Mental Agility is too expensive point-for-point right now. It'll be worth it in 3.1, though.

Spell Warding is especially important now that all the DK/Paladin teams are running that damn Shadowfrost-I-spam-IcyTouch-spec. Blessed Recovery is important against teams with Rogues, especially. I consider it essentially extra stamina.

The major hit against Blessed Recovery is actually the aforemention IcyTouch spam. It's not as useful as it once was, but it's still worth getting over things like Divine Aegis and Renewed Hope and Mental Agility. Think of it as extra stamina: Imagine you're getting wrecked by a Rogue that hits you with a crit mutilate (combined for 2.5k) and a cold blood eviscerate (for 5k). You pain suppression and live. In the next few seconds Blessed Recovery heals you for 1.125kHp. That's not too bad, at all, for three points. The heals you don't have to cast are the best heals. /shrug.

Edit: By the way, the best trinket in the world: Living Ice Crystals (off Malygos). A free 2.7k heal, off the gcd, that you can used *WHILE SILENCED*, every minute. The combination of Living Ice Crystals + Battlemaster's has saved me (or my partner) during strangulates/counterspells so many times. Of course, I'm a Human, so I can use both. But I highly reccomend it.

 

swankholyman

While this thread has mostly discussed the play style of disc priests I think it is very valuable to disuss the new spriest talent psychic horror. with it and silence priests now have 4 forms of CC (PH, PS, Sil, and MC) and in BG testing Ive found that one on one I can now cream DK's and rogues as as long as they dont blow COS and back to back stun lock me. Also PH can be a great way of forcing an early game bubble out of a retadin, which opens up great oppertunities to blow a CC chain on a healer off CD as Ret pallies surv is pretty low if they dont have heals or that bubble to back him up. Its just too bad it doesnt cause 2H to be dropped and while that seems OP, bubbles are 10 sec and only priests can dispell so I feel that it would be fair, maybe we'll see it one day but I doubt it.